The lighthouse was made redundant in 1999. The lights were not removed, but made powerless by officials with clipboards. Its position now on the cliff was sentimental; it was a postcard landmark of a town with three caravan parks and a Woolworths. In turn, His presence in the house of the lighthouse keeper was a jovial prank played on the both of them. One morning in 2005 He peered over his cup of tea at the lighthouse and considered the position they had found themselves in. Their redundancy was not so dissimilar to an early retirement, a mutually respectful removal from the situation of life. In a way, they were veterans of harder times. A once vigilant giant loomed over hidden daggers, ever aware but silently complacent in the face of mortal peril, and a small man in cargo pants was alone in his kitchen, lost. Most mornings He did what he could with himself. He ate breakfast, watched whales in distance and fed potato chips to colourful birds. But this morning, He couldn’t find himself. A fog had descended like a cold breeze and briefly he was floating upside down, unsure of which way the world was supposed to go. Upon righting himself, He set to work finding the kettle, and brewed a cup of tea doubly strong so he could find himself. This brought him to the lighthouse. He pondered many of life’s greatest questions, is there a god? How were we created? What is art? How can we navigate the complicated machinery of life? Is tomato really a fruit? Why does the perfect cup of tea elude all who try to brew it for themselves? Why do we all feel so very very alone? But most importantly, a question ached inside his rib cage with increasing fervour. Without a light, is a light house still a light house?
It had been five years since He moved in to the lighthouse. Once upon a time He had lived in the city. He worked in an office job and drank coffee on the train. But one day He had to go. So He went. He drove to the coast, and ambled up the jagged lines until he found the old lighthouse and the advertisement in the foggy window of the real estate agent’s. He’d had romanticised views of learning to surf and letting his tension waft away from him like a released kite but the lighthouse reached in to that aching wound and he was filled not with air but with lead. He was a dead weight, thrown miles away to be anchored against the mossy cliff and the chipped paint of a bitter lover.
So as He sat and contemplated the existence of a Lighthouse, He allowed his mind to wander, and finally settle on a very curious incident. On the previous night he had decided, quite out of character, to go for a walk on the beach. As the soft cold sand parted beneath his bare feet he tried to make sense of what lay before him, but in the cool darkness he could not make out ocean from sky. He continued on his slow path until the lighthouse grew smaller behind him and finally disappeared as he stumbled around the rocky headland. And then, with the kind of cool collection He had never possessed, He bent over double and introduced himself to the sand. The sand, as one would expect, said nothing in return, so content with his progress He continued onward, rolling with the light banter he didn’t know himself capable of. Upon reaching the end of the beach, he turned swiftly and said his polite goodbyes to the fastest friend he had ever made. And so it was that the next morning he made a decision about a lighthouse.
The cement stairs were hidden behind a thick layer of dirt and cobwebs, a funeral home for cockroaches and flies. His journey up the steep flight was slow, as his fear allowed him to pause at every hint of movement to assess the risk involved in continuing. The glow from his torch bounced off the flaking walls and created monstrous shapes to follow from in front of him, glancing back to reinforce his grim determination. On his left a former boss fell into step with him and leaned in to offer him a familiar wink as his mother crouched down two steps above him to speak with an eight-legged compatriot. A parade danced its way up forgotten steps, lovers shaking hands with high school teachers and pets running playfully in circles around his tired feet. As he reached the top of the winding staircase the parade began to spin with increasing speed, melting in to a whirlpool of colour to coat his skin thickly with shining heat as though he were covered in a slick rainbow of oil. And so in a blink he was staring into the darkness from a salt crusted window.
He stood inside the soul of a wounded animal, his soul flashing brightly on his skin while beneath their private jail a war was raged. It was a brutal, dramatic, familiar display of anger and frustration, an invitation so difficult to refuse. It called to them both, slipped inside their ears and spoke of what came next, of what came finally. It pulled and pulled and pulled, manipulating their physicality in to a weapon of its own. But He could not be dissuaded. He turned to his soul mate, to the dead weight on his chest, and he danced. He danced with no sense of urgency, no sense of anger, only with great expectation. He twisted and turned his rainbow body around the empty shell, coating its transparent walls with the same shield his memories had shared with him. He danced his way inside of the cage and it began to fall around him, he was curling in to a ball, spinning wildly, filling the space with himself and illuminating not only everything around him, but all that lay beneath them. His feverish light fell upon the sharp danger below them and shot out toward the horizon, turning the darkest parts of the ocean into liquid flame. He was igniting them both, setting flame to the war that had kept them both anchored, outlining thousands of paths for them to follow. He was burning them both through, melting them until they found each other standing bare. Standing bare in the face of their future.
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